there's blood, and then there's you
by HeartOfCoal
Summary: alternative ending to Thor, The Dark World. 'No. I have said what needs to be said, done what had to be done. This is it; I am gone. No more. Alas, there was more. My body temperature rose, and I could feel the fire on my tongue and the ash in my lungs, but I was fading. Foggy, distant, I ran my fingers over the sand and fell into oblivion (again).'
1. Chapter 1

**a/u: my first Thor fanfic. I've had this idea for while. Eventual LokiexSif. Reviews are always nice. Enjoy! **

There was pain, and then there was death. The two were so close together that it was near impossible to determine which one has wound itself around me, clawing up my limbs like fire. The sand beneath me felt like snow. I was hollow, blood sticking to me; and there was Thor. My not-brother/brother. I don't know anymore. I know that my chest is seizing and my words are choking me, so I spit them out into the open air, and I taste my own blood in the back of my mouth. Apologizes are nothing. They're worthless. Thor doesn't know that I am not apologizing for my anger, my destruction; I am just apologizing for dying. I came into this battle, this treason, knowing that I might not come out of it, but Thor looked shocked. Did he not know the risks? I almost laughed.

I closed my eyes. Darkness was warm, and I had grown as chilled as winter. Thor's touch lingered on my body for a while longer, his tears drying on my face, and I wondered if he could still feel my pulse. I guess he didn't. I knew he had to leave, and I let him, because this was it. I was going to die here.

I wondered if the shallow wind could blow through me, and I wondered if I believed in Hell. More darkness; it covered me like a blanket, and I sank into into it, suddenly grateful for warmth. I was no more.

But I was. The magic that soared in my veins started pumping, stuttering and stopping sometimes but flowing all the same. Pain was blinding; it always hurt the worst, right when it started, and then it grows hot. Part of me didn't want it.

_No. I have said what needs to be said, done what had to be done. This is it; I am gone. No more._

Alas, there was more. My body temperature rose, and I could feel the fire on my tongue and the ash in my lungs, but I was fading. Foggy, distant, I ran my fingers over the sand and fell into oblivion (again).

I am moving. I feel an engine beneath me, humming, living breathing, apologizing, dying, maybe. I cannot open my eyes; my skin is on fire. The magic burns me. I don't want it.

There's a hand lying easily, lightly on my shoulder.

"Sleep. You're very ill."

I didn't feel ill; I felt dead. But I didn't tell them, I couldn't, so I concentrated on their touch and tried to recognize the voice, but everything inside of me was a mess.

Voices thunder against the inside of my head. They're close, outside of me, my mind, but I still feel them like venom. I don't know where I am or how I am. But the voices stop, and again there's that hand on my shoulder; a guide. Their fingers brush my neck, and I shiver. They are too cold or I am too hot, one or the other.

"Is he coming to?"

"It looks like it. Maybe you should leave, my Lady; there's no telling what he could be like when he wakes. He could be violent."

"I think I could handle that, if it comes to it."

I still can't place the voice, and I don't think I'm coming to. My body aches. It feels as if my bones are breaking and then fixing themselves, filling me with faulty seams that curse my every breath. The hand moves to my neck, to my head, and I lean into it. It keeps me grounded.

"Loki."

I don't respond, I can't.

"He's very ill, my Lady. Let him rest."

"I'll stay with him while he sleeps."

"It would be no use to him, or to you, m-"

"It will comfort him, at the least. If he will die," she mumbles, as if I couldn't hear, "then he shall not do so alone."

Foot steps leave the room, and I am left alone with the faceless voice, the faceless touch.

"Am I going to die?" My voice is hardly a whisper; the effort makes me dizzy inside my own head.

"No, Loki. I won't let you."

I lean further into their touch. It cools me.

"I'm going to beat you into a pulp as soon as you're okay, got it?" She almost sounds angry, but she sound like a lot of other things, too.

My heart skips a beat, and I smile. "Oh, Sif. How I've missed you." Almost sarcastic. Almost.

"Shut up. Go back to sleep, you idiot."

I do as she says. I always seem to have done it, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**a/u: this is going to get very feelsy very quickly. warning you. reviews are welcome. happy new year! **

I don't what time it is, but I am finally awake. Sort of. I'd say I'm half way there, because I can hear the wind blowing through the window, and I can tell that it's open. I can taste the cool air, and it's a relief. For now, what I can understand most is temperature. A premature thing, but it helps. My skin is hot, and that burns; but Sif is cool, and it's nice. She's like fresh water.

But she's not here with me now. Again, there are voices outside. They're in the hallway, I can tell. Their voices are hot. Not good. I can make that separation, but I'm still too foggy to tell what they're saying. When I open my eyes, it's dark. I can't see the stars through the thin curtains, and I want to go look out the window, but I'm cuffed down. No, that's not right; I'm not tied down, but I can't move. When I try, my vision slips and my head pounds, so I don't even get past sitting up. I stay where I am, with my back arched and my forehead pressing into my knees, breathing sharply. My breath is hot; not good. I'm shaking. I'm glad that Sif isn't here, because I would hate for her to see me like this; hardly able to sit up.

Another breeze brushes through, and it lifts the hair off my damp neck. That's what I concentrate on. Not the voices, but the hollow pain in my abdomen; just the cold.

I think for a moment that I'm going to throw up, so I lie back down and press my arm over my eyes, a desperate attempt to block out the advancing virago. My pulse is ragged in my throat. I taste my heart.

The door creaks open, and there's a cold hand on my neck. Sif. Always Sif. I don't why she's here, always here, but I'm glad that she is. I don't open my eyes, not even when she slides her fingers inside my fist.

"You're going to cut your palm open," she whispers.

I already have. Sif gently takes my arm and wipes the blood from my palm, and I open my eyes a crack to see her do it. Her hair is tied back. She looks tired, but she smiles at me. She's all that I see.

"How long have I been here?" I ask, because it's beginning to feel like ages.

"A few days."

It's not Sif that answers. There's a shadow in the corner (I still can't place where I am, but I recognize the room) and from it the voice drawls, slow and deep. I can't tell if the voice is hot or cold. I squint towards the darkness, curious.

"Loki, shh, don't move," Sif hushes. She shoots a glance back to the shadow.

"Who-"

"Do you not recognize my voice, my son?"

No. No. _No, nonononono._ My stomach drops. My whole body drops, but yet I shoot back up to a sitting position, letting the walls wash around me. The sheets are a mess in my fists; I don't know when that happened. I only know that I need to get out, get out of this place and out of this presence because he's going to kill me. That's all I can think.

The dungeon. His words. I am not his son, but he is still my father. I can't understand. It's all a mess. My legs burn when I stand, my skin burns when I breathe.

Pain shoots up my body when my feet hit the cold floor, and my knees give. I land on the floor, my still-bloody palm smacking into the ground and my hair falling into my eyes. I still can't see the stars.

Sif is there, I know she is, I can feel her touching me. And she's talking, hissing, like a snake. Something about too soon, she told him, I don't know. My head is burning.

"Loki," she whispers, her hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling.

The door open and closes, and I know that _he_ is gone.

"I can't be here. I-"

"No. No, you can, you're okay. Thor, he told us, he told him, you're father-"

"He is not my father," I say, but part of me knows it's a lie.

I don't know when she did it, but suddenly Sif is kneeling in front of me with her arms around me. It's been years since we did this. Her face in inches from my own, and the feel of her breath on my lower lip suddenly makes me remember, _really_ remember, and then I can't stop.

I used to kiss her in the dark by her door, and she would take me inside like a lost animal. Her scent clung to me. It dug under my skin and burned through my veins like magic. I remembered the way we would undress each other, as if the sun rising depended on it, and we made love the same way. It was always in the dark. It was always our little secret. The way we kissed and touched each other was something personal, like a letter to an old lover, stored away in a shoe box under your bed. But it was the kind of thing that you protested. Covered in a fine layer of dust, but fresh in your mind. That's what Sif is in my mind: an old letter.

When Sif blushes, I realize that she does it the same way: quietly, lightly. You'd miss it if you weren't staring.

We're silent for a while until she asks me to lie back down, and I do. I fold my hands together in my lap and stare a them, sheepish of how badly I'm shaking and how shallow my breathing is. Sif's hands are cool. She pushes me back down and takes one of my hands, her words brushing my palm.

"This is a lot to take in. There's a lot still to be sorted out, and we'll get there, but just know that you're safe here."

I don't respond. Suddenly I feel agelessly heavy, as if the universe is closing in on me; blinking is almost frightening. Sif's hand smooths the hair out of my eyes and she smiles. It's sad, but it has a glimmer of something else, and that's the last thing I see before I can't re-open my eyes anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

**a/u: it's going slowly, but there will be stuff. i'm not sure how much i like this, some feedback would be greatly appreciated. **

As ill at ease I feel while in Asgard, I must admit that the winter is still stunning. I finally realized where I am: the southernmost healing room. From the window, I can see the blurs of people as they walk the streets, snow in their hair and their breath visible. It looks nice. Calming. Cold.

I'm better now. For the most part, anyway. The fever is still there, but it's a vacant thought, like the dull throbbing of my head. Someone told me that I died, just for a second. I find that odd; I've died. That thought plagues me like nothing else, because there's a nagging part of my mind that tells me that I should have stayed that way. But I didn't. It was my own magic that saved me, kicking in like am emergency start button in my core. I almost despise it.

Nobody is around. I'm alone, staring out the window with my palms pressed into the concrete. It bites against my hands. I like it. It keeps me grounded. So does Sif, but she hasn't been around in a day or two.

I wonder if she remembers everything that I do. How the first time I met her, we were hardly adults, and the first time I kissed her, it was fumbling and sloppy because of the drink. She smelled the way summer does. She still does; that may never change. And all those nights, all those days, came crashing down to the night I saw her kiss my brother. I was paralyzed, paused in the corridor on my way to see her. Thor told me later that he kissed her, that it was his move, but I saw the way her body tensed and then relaxed into him. I saw her kiss him. That seemed to last forever. When they broke away, they just stared at each other. I turned on my heel, but I knew that Sif saw me. I felt her eyes on me, and it was such a familiar burning that it made me sick.

Sighing, I drag my hand down my face. The window creaks when I close it, and I slip my shoes back on before leaving the room. I haven't been told to stay in there. In fact, I haven't been told much at all, but I expected as much. I don't know if Thor is still here. There isn't anyone in the walls, which isn't odd; it's about dinner time for most families. The sun is just starting to set, casting faint light in the hallway as I wonder, letting my hand trail the walls of my old home. My footsteps echo. Until then, I never realized how empty this place was. It's so barren you can almost taste it.

I don't know where I'm going until I'm there, standing in front of my old chambers. Dust has collected on the doorknob. I wonder what this room is now; had they made it into a guest room? That makes me smile, bitter. It could be a tourist attraction.

Curious, I turn the knob and push the door open, and I almost gasp.

Nothing has moved. It's exactly how it was last time I was in here, everything unmoved, untouched. I don't go in. I just stare. I feel something like nostalgia clawing its way up my throat, but I'm not sure; never am. My head aches, but I don't go back. Not just yet.

"Mother didn't have the heart to clean it out."

I don't need to turn around to know that Thor is behind me. I can feel his breath. My first footsteps into the room and quiet, slow, and I can't explain why I feel so angry, so hot. Maybe it's the fever; I can feel it now, dragging its way through my veins. It burns a little. Thor follows me in and the door closes quietly. It's a sound I recognize.

On my bed, the sheets are still a mess, the past memory of a sleepless night. I run my fingers over them.

"Loki, I-"

But then he stops. That's always what Thor did: act like he had something to say and then snatch it away form you, leaving you wondering and shaking in your skin. I don't respond to him. Instead I make my way to my nightstand and fiddle with the handle for a moment. Thor's breathing fills the room. It's easy to see that he has something to say, but I think that he just can't figure it out. He's always been foolish like that.

On a whim, I give the drawer a tug and out it comes, and I stifle a smile. Guilty pleasures. I pull out a pack of smokes and light one using the tip of my finger, even though it makes me a little dizzy. The smoke pours out from between my lips, and I watch it go, twisting and turning above my head until it vanishes. My lugs ache from the unfamiliar murk. I smile.

"None of this was ever meant to happen," Thor whispers.

There's something in his voice, but I don't turn around to see what it is. I put the smoke out and looked out a window, gauging his words.

"That does not change the fact that it did."

"No, brother, and it does not change any of the foolish things you did! What we are looking at," Thor says, and he grabs my arm to keep me looking at him, "is the fact that you risked your life to save us. To save me, brother. Father, he's willing to talk about it. He says that what you did will not be for-"

"S-stop. Just let it be," I mutter, dropping onto my bed; I rest my head in my hands.

My skin felt hot. Suddenly the walls were blurry, but I think it was just the magic in my skin, mixing things up. Thor's voice was softer next time he spoke.

"I must go. When you are ready, go to Father. Have faith, my dear brother." His hand cupped my cheek, and I didn't feel angry; I can't count the times he did this to me, and I would do the same to him. Back then, when we were children, it was our show of affection towards one another.

When Thor left, he did so quietly, leaving me to be eaten up by the thought of everything.

–––––––––

That night, I do not go to see Father. I go to see Sif. Carefully, slowly, I pull a cloak on over my clothes and slip through the door. It's snowing; it clings to my hood and sits on my face before it melts. Snow has always calmed me; I think it's because of how endless it is, falling in shite strinsg suspended in oblivion.

He chambers are not far. There are very few people in the halls, and it's easy to avoid them, which is what I do. The night is calm. It looks as if Sif had been preparing for bed when I knock, and her face flushes when she sees me. I don't smile, don't breath. Neither does she.

"It's late."

"Hasn't it always been?"

Sif sighs. Invites me in. Her chambers are neat, always have been, and they smell the same way that she herself does; like pressed rose petals. I don't ever tell her she reminds me of that. Again, we don't talk. She runs her fingers through her hair and opens her mouth as if she'd like to say something, but she closes her mouth. I hear the little click of her teeth.

I remember when our teeth used to knock together, when we were too hasty. It suddenly occurs to me how much time had passed us by. Countless hours, lying bare and half asleep next to one another. How she'd drive me right to the edge and then jump down with me. Those moments with her blind me, burn at me and I almost leave, but then she finally speaks.

"It's been a long time since we last talked," Sif whispers. "I don't even know what to say to you."

"You're not going to threaten me again, I do hope."

Sif smiles a little. "Keep hoping, Silvertongue." I keep myself from flinching at the name, but Sif notices something. She always does. "Oh, I forgot how much you hated being called that."

I think suddenly of taking her face in my hand, of running my thumb along her bottom lip. I can almost taste her in my mouth, her scent buried with dust and bitter words, of everything we'd said after that night she kissed my brother. How many names had we'd called each other? It was the first time I had lost love. I'm not sure if I can even call it that.

Then Sif is there next to me, and her fingers are on my cheek, soft and quiet. I wonder if she can feel my pulse.

"Oh, Loki," she mummers, "what did you do to yourself?"

"I opened my eyes."

Her hand drops. She almost looks sad, but I look away from her, my heart pounding.

"No. No, I think you may have closed them."

Part of me is dizzy with how much I might believe her, and the other is overwhelmed with the desire to kiss her, to rake my hands through her hair and push her into the bed.


End file.
